False Friend: Groserías vs. Groceries

Good evening, and welcome to Word Wednesday! Today we’ll look at another False Friend. If you’re not sure what a False Friend is, check out this post (and go here for a list of the False Friends we’ve already talked about). Today we’ll look at the difference between groserías in Spanish and groceries in English.

This is our refrigerator right now. I’d say it’s about time we bought some groceries!

False Friend: groserías vs. groceries

This SPANISH word…

Looks like this ENGLISH word…

…but they are DIFFERENT because…

groserías

groceries

In Spanish, groserías are bad words:

“No me digas groserías!” (“Don’t say bad words to me!”)

In English, groceries is a word that refers to all the food you buy at a store or supermarket:

“We’re almost out of milk, and we need to buy more pasta, also. Let’s go to the store to buy some groceries.“

Notice also that the “c” in “groceries” is pronounced like an “sh,” like in the word “she,” at least in American English.

This is pretty easy to remember, and it’s not that commonly confused –but when it is, it’s pretty funny! Now that I think about it, I’ll have to do a series on bad words in English and Spanish, since there are some that are very similar, but they’re less serious or offensive in one language or the other. So stay tuned for that!

In the meantime, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for other False Friends or Common Errors, please tell me.

Sitzman

Hey! I’m Ryan Sitzman, the person in charge of Sitzman ABC. If you want to know more about me, you can check out my profile on Google or go to my personal site, RyanSitzman.com. You can also click on any of the redundant little boxes to the left and it should take you to my profiles for all kinds of social networks. Thanks!

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